1 year ago
129
In the autumn of 2020, gig workers successful Venezuela posted a bid of images to online forums wherever they gathered to speech shop. The photos were mundane, if sometimes intimate, household scenes captured from debased angles—including a peculiarly revealing changeable of a young pistillate successful a lavender T-shirt sitting connected the toilet, her shorts pulled down to mid-thigh.
The images were not taken by a person, but by improvement versions of iRobot’s Roomba J7 bid robot vacuum, the institution which Amazon precocious acquired for $1.7 cardinal successful a pending deal. They were past sent to Scale AI, a startup that contracts workers astir the satellite to statement information utilized to bid artificial intelligence.
Earlier this year, MIT Technology Review obtained 15 screenshots of these backstage photos, which had been posted to closed societal media groups. The images talk to the widespread, and growing, signifier of sharing perchance delicate information to bid algorithms. They besides uncover a full information proviso chain—and caller points wherever idiosyncratic accusation could leak out—that fewer consumers are adjacent alert of. Read the afloat story.
—Eileen Guo
How AI-generated substance is poisoning the internet
If you’ve spent overmuch clip online recently, you’ve astir apt stumbled crossed a joke, essay, oregon different spot of substance written by ChatGPT, the latest incarnation of OpenAI’s ample connection exemplary GPT-3.
It’s becoming progressively hard to archer what’s written by AI, and what’s written by humans. But determination is simply a much superior semipermanent implication. We whitethorn beryllium witnessing, successful existent time, the commencement of a snowball of bullshit.
These models are trained connected substance scraped from the internet, including each the toxic, silly, false, malicious things humans person written online, which they past regurgitate arsenic fact.
When tech companies scrape the net again, they scoop up AI-written substance that they usage to bid bigger, much convincing models, which humans tin usage to make adjacent much nonsense earlier it is scraped again and again, advertisement nauseam. This problem—AI feeding connected itself and producing progressively polluted output—is lone going to turn unless we act, and enactment quickly. Read the afloat story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
Melissa’s communicative is from The Algorithm, her play newsletter shining a airy connected the murky satellite of AI. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Monday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 Elon Musk hasn’t said if he’ll measurement down oregon not
Instead, he’s (finally) questioning whether Twitter polls are a omniscient mode to marque decisions. (The Guardian)
+ The moments that person defined Musk’s Twitter tenure to date. (WP $)
+ The institution is rapidly changing nether him, often hourly. (Vox)
+ Does it truly substance if Musk is CEO oregon not, fixed that helium owns Twitter? (The Intercept)
+ Bill Gates thinks the institution is stirring up integer polarization. (FT $)
+ Mastodon has gained much than 2 cardinal caller users since Musk took over. (The Verge)
2 China is trying to unrecorded with covid
The government’s determination to rapidly wantonness its zero-covid strategy has near officials struggling. (NYT $)
3 Sam Bankman-Fried has agreed to beryllium extradited to the US
But it’s not wide when. (Reuters)
+ He spent his archetypal week successful situation watching movies and speechmaking articles astir himself. (NY Mag $)
+ Here’s conscionable immoderate of the things SBF spent a cardinal dollars on. (FT $)
+ It’s good to opt retired of the crypto revolution. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Negotiators person struck a landmark woody to support the planet
If successful, it volition support astatine slightest a 3rd of each onshore and h2o by 2030. (Vox)
+ Why the oil-rich Gulf is investing heavy successful cleanable energy. (Economist $)
+ Climate enactment is gaining momentum. So are the disasters. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Deadly strep A infections could beryllium spreading crossed the US
An outbreak successful the UK has killed 16 children, and the US could beryllium next. (Wired $)
6 Criminals swatted victims done hacked Ring cameras
The brace live-streamed equipped constabulary responses to their hoax calls online. (Bloomberg $)
+ How Amazon Ring uses home unit to marketplace doorbell cameras. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Mexico’s transportation apps indebtedness programs are saddling workers with debt
The involvement rapidly accumulates, and is automatically deducted from their pay. (Rest of World)
8 Mars is amazingly windy
So overmuch truthful that it could powerfulness quality colonies, if we ever negociate to settee there. (Motherboard)
9 TikTok is driving involvement successful buccal abdominous removal
Users are speculating which celebrities person undergone the procedure, which extracts abdominous from the cheeks to accentuate the cheekbones. (WSJ $)
10 Tracking Santa’s travel crossed the globe is simply a superior concern 🎅
The antheral down the tracking tech is assured it’s perfectly fail-safe. (Insider $)
Quote of the day
“It sounds similar they truly privation to become… not needfully landlords of the rainforest but, yeah, owning the rainforest.”
—Jillian Crandall, an architect, questions NFT institution Nemus’s plans to bargain much than 40,000 hectares of the Amazon rainforest and merchantability corresponding integer tokens successful a conservation bid, she tells Motherboard.
The large story
Money is astir to participate a caller epoch of competition
April 2022
To many, currency present seems mostly anachronistic. People crossed the satellite commonly usage their smartphones to wage for things. This displacement whitethorn look similar a imaginable operator of inequality: if currency disappears, 1 imagines, that could disenfranchise the elderly, the poor, and others.
In practice, though, compartment phones are astir astatine saturation successful galore countries. And integer money, if implemented correctly, could beryllium a unit for fiscal inclusion.
The large questions present are astir however we proceed, and whether the immense integer wealth displacement yet benefits humanity astatine large—or exacerbates existing home and planetary inequities. Read the afloat story.
—Eswar Prasad
We tin inactive person bully things
A spot for comfort, amusive and distraction successful these weird times. (Got immoderate ideas? Drop maine a line or tweet 'em astatine me.)
+ Once spiders larn to type, that’s erstwhile we truly request to worry.
+ Historical biomolecules could yet springiness america much-needed penetration into Vlad the Impaler.
+ Please, I beg you, instrumentality thing but my tote bag.
+ If you’ve ever wondered, here’s the nonstop look you’d request to marque 300 delicious latkes—for a latke party, of course.
+ Salt Lake City’s festive decorations are making maine consciousness seriously Christmassy.
English (US) ·